Silver, Gold, Gone
by Allekha
Summary: Victor takes Yuri to a fancy New Year's party. Yuri makes sure Victor knows he's not allowed to leave skating until Yuri overtakes him. (AU, slight futurefic, Yuri/Victor)


A/N: AU futurefic where the video didn't go viral (or maybe the Sochi banquet went differently), and Victor didn't take off to coach Yuuri. Not a particularly happy story.

Written for the prompt 'fancy' on the holiday-prompts New Year's table.

* * *

Yuri had always spent the holidays at home, with his grandparents, and when she'd been around, his mom. Even after he'd just moved to Saint Petersburg, when money was tight, he'd scraped together enough to go home. Nowadays, things were easier, and it had always been nice to see his grandfather and eat as much of Grandpa's cooking as he wanted and not worry about his diet plan for a couple of days.

This was the first year where he was staying in Saint Petersburg.

He felt a little guilty over it, but not too much, since at least his grandpa wasn't sitting alone in his apartment; he was visiting his brother who Yuri had never met because he lived _way_ out in the middle of nowhere. Yuri had no interest in spending a week stuck with relatives he didn't know at all with nothing to do but sit around and play on his phone, without even Potya to entertain him.

So instead he'd stayed where he was and made his own pirozhki. And now, on New Year's Eve itself, he was opening the apartment door to let Victor in.

Yakov raised his head as they passed by him. "I'm taking Yura out for a while," Victor said brightly, waving. "If we're out too late, he might crash at my place."

'Out' to one of those fancy parties that fancy people – like, say, sponsors – might go to. Yuri knew that Victor didn't even go to them most of the time; last year, he'd texted Yuri a picture of himself and Makkachin, lolling around on the floor of his living room, to wish him a happy New Year. Yuri didn't know why Victor had accepted this particular invitation, and Yuri didn't much _want_ to spend a holiday trying to network with rich people, but it was only one night. He could suffer for a bit, then stuff himself on whatever food they had and go find Victor for the rest of the evening.

Victor clicked his tongue as soon as Yuri came out of his room, having changed into a suit. "What?" Yuri snapped. Honestly, Victor and fashion and image.

"It's not _bad_ ," Victor said. "But do you have anything that fits better?"

"What's wrong with this one?"

"It's a bit too small." He touched Yuri's wrist, where the sleeve might have ended a few millimeters short of where it should have. Yuri didn't know all the details of how suits were supposed to work. (And not for lack of trying on Victor's part.) "Are you coming into a growth spurt?"

"I don't know." Yuri hoped not. He pulled his hand away. It wouldn't be unexpected at sixteen, but... just a little longer like this. He just needed his body to hold off for a little longer. "Can we go?"

"Not with your tie looking like that."

Yuri rolled his eyes but let Victor re-tie it, slightly differently, and then let him fuss with his hair for a moment. It had gotten long enough to pull back but not long enough that it didn't look weird when he did; Yuri had braided the front of it back so at least it wouldn't get in his face. " _Now_ can we go?" he asked when Victor had smoothed it down.

"Okay, okay. Here." He made one last adjustment and stepped back. "Perfect! Want me to take a picture?"

Yuri did, and on the way to the party, he sent it to his grandpa and to Otabek. He actually looked pretty good in the image. Still young, his eyes big and his hair giving him a softer look, but not childish. Maybe the suit helped. Maybe Victor's advice while buying the suit, exasperating though it had been, had helped.

After they arrived, Yuri duly held his glass of champagne without drinking and attempted to play nice with the other guests for a while. It turned out not to be quite as bad as he'd imagined. He didn't feel like a clinger-on to Victor, trying to ride on the coattails of his more famous rinkmate.

Well, he'd provided real competition to Victor in his Seniors debut; he hadn't won over him at the GPF, but only by a thin margin. He'd been so fueled by frustration and anger and challenge – the fire stoked by the media and Victor and a few conversations with the other Yuri – that he'd even beat Victor's free skate world record, to the shocked screaming of the crowd.

(And then he'd gotten bronze at Nationals, because he'd fallen on a couple of jumps and Georgi's tears had apparently impressed the judges. But it was silver this year, at least.)

Everyone knew that Victor's time was coming, and it was coming soon. He'd just turned twenty-nine. He couldn't land quads forever. It'd been his body wearing away or an injury or something. Either he got to bow out at the top of his game, or he was going to be forced out, and Yuri? Yuri was going to be standing there next.

He better not retire before Yuri won a gold over him, though. That would be the _worst_.

When he was bored of socializing, Yuri plunked his glass down somewhere, loaded up on the food, and dodged around people dancing and chatting, doing his best to avoid those who looked like they'd had too much of the alcohol. He got waylaid by more people, and by now he'd been lectured enough by Lilia _and_ Yakov _and_ Victor to know that he should at least pretend to be interested in them for a minute before he ducked away.

By the time he finally found Victor, it was getting close to midnight. Victor, surprisingly enough, was by himself, having found a hidden spot by some potted plants on a balcony. The moon was full and bright, making his hair shine; he was toying with a glass of champagne, but he didn't, thankfully, look that drunk. He just seemed like he was thinking about something. For a moment, he looked older than he usually did, but when he saw Yuri and smiled – not the fake smile, the small but real one – his face went back to normal.

"I networked," Yuri told him.

"Good job," Victor said. He let Yuri crowd in next to him – it was cold out here, and a suit wasn't going to cut it for long. "Can I have one?"

Yuri grudgingly let him take one of the pieces of food – whatever that particular one was called – off his plate. If he'd been hiding out here for a bit, he might not have had the chance to take any of the good ones. Yuri stuffed a couple of more of them in his own mouth, and for a quiet moment, they stood there, looking at the city. It was a nice break from the meaningless chatter.

"I know this kind of thing doesn't come naturally to you," Victor said, "but I'm glad you're getting better at it. When the crown passes to you, you won't be able to get by on force of personality forever if you don't learn how to play nice sometimes, even if you hate it."

"Yeah, yeah, it's New Year's Eve, lay off on the advice. Besides, you've already given me that lecture. At least come up with a new one if you're going to be my PR coach." He picked at another piece of food that he couldn't identify by moonlight. "And the crown's not _passing_ to me. I'm gonna take it."

"Not if you don't beat me first," and he was smiling.

"I _will_. So don't get any ideas about leaving. No injuries, either. You're not allowed."

"Ah, I see. No injuries, I'll write that down." Yuri kicked his ankle; Victor laughed. "And then I'm supposed to let you keep all my golds, once you take them? Retire and wave good-bye and say, 'here's Yuri Plisetsky, he'll be the Hero of Russia now'?" His voice was light, but there was a serious undertone that Yuri didn't know what to do with.

"Obviously," he said. "After that, you can go be the best at something else for a change. Coaching or choreography or whatever. Start a PR firm and only take on skaters. Go live out in the countryside with a bunch of dogs." He didn't know Victor's exact plans; as far as he knew, Victor didn't either. But that was his problem.

"And what if I retire before you win?"

Yuri's stomach twisted if he thought about it too much. Victor had been skating at top levels for, literally, as long as he'd been alive. He'd been the idol to aspire to as a little kid; he'd been his rinkmate since he was a desperate ten-year-old striving to show everyone how he was worthy of their time and money. Competing against him was both exhausting and exhilarating at once.

"No," Yuri said.

"So you want me to go away, but only on your terms." Victor shook his head. "Selfish."

Yuri rolled his eyes and took the opportunity to steal what was left of Victor's champagne and down it in a gulp. The splash of bubbles hitting his tongue was almost painful, and it didn't taste that great. Yuri wondered sometimes if people actually liked it or they liked the stupid way alcohol made them act or if they drank it just to be fancy.

"You do make me want to take back my record," Victor continued, and Yuri looked up, pleased for a moment, until he saw Victor's expression. It was too far away, his gaze somewhere on the horizon, like he wasn't actually talking about Yuri at all. He ground his teeth. "I wonder if you'd be satisfied if I fell apart trying to retake it, instead? Even the great Victor Nikiforov, unable to overtake you, tried so hard he was forced to—"

"Stop talking so weirdly." Yuri dropped both glass and plate on a tiny little table nearby, which barely held both dishes. Victor was being strange and it was setting him on edge and he'd already suffered enough tonight, faking interest in what everyone inside had to say. "Falling apart, what the hell are you talking about? You're going to be fine."

There was an awkward moment of silence, and then Yuri could see Victor putting back on a smile. The same kind he'd been giving everyone but Yuri all night, not the real one, like he got when he was being stupid over his dog or when they had dinner together and Yuri pointed out all the places where Victor was cooking things wrong. Yuri hated having that smile directed at him. "Alright," Victor said. He pulled out his phone. "It's almost midnight! Did you want to go back in?"

"No way," because he'd had enough of networking and he'd come out here to get away from it, and he didn't want Victor to go back to ignoring him before Yuri dragged him out for the night. Someone inside shouted that there was only a minute left in the year.

"Okay," Victor said, and _there_ , he had a little spark of amusement in his eyes. "Are you sure you aren't too cold?" he asked, reaching out to pluck a stray hair from Yuri's shoulder.

Yuri grabbed his hand. If he was cold (which he was), Victor was freezing. How long had he been out here, brooding about a much more important and much less knowable countdown than the one starting to happen inside?

At least Victor was looking at him now. Yuri looked up at his eyes, made colorless in the moonlight, and he didn't want to to talk about Victor's retirement any more. He'd be fine, whatever happened. He could do whatever he wanted, had enough money that he wouldn't even have to work if he didn't want to. As long as Yuri got his gold, first, everything would work out _fine_.

Yuri didn't know why he was still so irritated.

"Five!" the crowd inside went, and Yuri was barely aware of himself making the decision.

"Four!" and he stepped closer, his scowl deepening.

"Three!" and he let go of Victor's hand to grab his too-high shoulders instead.

"Two!" and he rocked up on his toes.

"One!" and Victor's eyes widened.

Yuri kissed him.

Victor gripped his shoulders, and for a moment – but then they slid down, along his back, and Victor didn't push him away, but pulled him closer. It was the closest thing to victory Yuri could remember feeling outside of a competition.

When Victor pulled away, Yuri kissed him a second time, to make sure his intentions were clear. Victor kissed him the third time, and then again, working his tongue into his mouth. It tasted like champagne and the food they'd shared a minute ago, and it was kind of weird but Yuri opened his jaw further. And of course Victor was excellent at this, too; he didn't just shove his tongue in, but went more gently, drew it along his teeth in a way that somehow made Yuri's cheeks hot.

Then Victor broke it off to kiss his jaw, his neck, a little wet, before glancing up. For a moment, Yuri thought they'd been caught, and his pulse leaped, but when he turned around, there was nobody there to see them. Victor caught him again and kept him like that, pressed against him back to chest, and pressed his lips to his neck once more.

At first, Yuri thought it was so one of them could keep an eye out, but when Victor buried his face into his hair, he wondered if there wasn't another reason for it. "Greedy, Yurochka," Victor murmured. "You want so many faces of mine."

"The fuck," Yuri muttered. What did that mean?

Victor's arms slipped away. "Let's go make our excuses," he suggested. He pulled Yuri inside with him, an arm around his shoulders, heavier and warmer than it had ever been before.

Everyone who Victor had to fend off smiled and nodded and agreed that yes, they must be very tired, they were so used to rising early, they really must get their rest, though it still took too long to make it through them all. Victor helped him into his coat, and even tried to do the buttons for him before Yuri shoved him off. Yuri's phone rang as Victor started to put his own on; oh, it was Grandpa. It was the shortest call he'd ever had with him, cut off as soon as Victor had brushed off one last man in an expensive suit and turned back to Yuri.

When Victor's arm wrapped around him again, Yuri could feel him gripping his shoulder, and when Yuri glanced up, Victor looked back, then steered him towards the exit.


End file.
